Open Letter to Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz

Thank you Tan Sri Zeti,

It has been a month long wait in agony and desperation since the raid by Bank Negara Malaysia not knowing what the future holds for us and our dependents. Today, your words of assurance to end this investigation as soon as possible gave us a glimmer of hope that our predicament will soon end with a positive outcome.

Thank you for finally acknowledging our plight and we look forward to your next course of action. We would like to express our admiration for your achievements and although we recognize the need to take measures upon suspicions of wrong doing, this cannot justify the impoverishment of over 60,000 people and their families, a direct result of the Bank Negara led raid.

Tan Sri Zeti, we are neither “depositors” nor “investors” of Genneva Malaysia Sdn Bhd. We are merely customers who bought gold from Genneva with our life-savings. We’d also like to leave the arguments about the validity of the company aside. Be it about ‘hibah,’ ‘deposit-taking,’ ‘AMLA.’ ‘BAFIA’ or any other acronyms that seem to permeate the financial world these days. It’s all rather tiring so we’ll let the company duke it out with your financial and legal experts.

Instead, we’d like to make this appeal as a person. One human being to another. We make this appeal:

As single mothers whose savings base and income came from the company before the raid.

We are also fathers, providing food and a roof over the heads of our families.

We are grandfathers and grandmothers, retirees whose savings are sorely needed to see us through our old age, savings that is now in some frozen account or gold that is in one of your vaults.

We are the sick, patients with no other source of income, badly needing that money for medication. Our needs are not only urgent, they are critical as well.

There are thousands upon thousands of us. It is our hope that you listen to us even as your officers have not and whoever it was in BNM who organised this irresponsible raid that caused such grief and anguish to countless thousands of families.

With all due respect, Tan Sri Zeti, do you also blame us for our current hardship, as many have done? Do you yourself call us ‘greedy’ and ‘ignorant’ too?

Might we remind, that it was you who said that keeping interest rates too low for too long may lead to the “mispricing of risks.” You warned against artificially low interest rates.

We are therefore surprised why it is the Central Banks policy to keep interest rates low, you knew in your heart that it would drive us to into ‘higher-yielding assets that pose(d) significant risks.’

By the way, we do not think that gold holds any ‘significant risk,’ at least not at this point of time. The risk came directly from the unjust confiscation of that gold by Bank Negara. Now many of us are without our gold and savings.

For the aged, the old and the sick, their ‘yield’ from these ‘assets’ were all they had, and your bank took it away from them. We may not have the financial intellect like you to understand what all this means.. but we can see and feel and experience.

We see that real inflation is spiralling out of control, and wonder why there never seems to be enough to last us till the end of the month.

We feel how low interest rates punish savers. For many of us, the interest after a year from fixed deposits can’t even pay for a family dinner at a nice restaurant!

We experience the hopelessness and helplessness of being crushed by debt, our incomes never rising to meet expenses or to pay off debt.

That is not all. The rakyat, not only contending with low interest rates, spiraling inflation, weak to no personal income growth or even worse, no income at all, must also face confiscation of what little wealth we have by the authorities.

Must we live in fear that the authorities, with their far reaching powers, can at any time, confiscate and take that which does not belong to them with impunity? The little that we have, our liberty, and our right to chose?

We sincerely hope you come to a decision soon and that compassion guides your motives although it may seem out of date these days. Please release the gold and money which is unjustly held by Bank Negara so that we can move on with our lives.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 — The investigation of controversial gold trading company Genneva Malaysia is being fast tracked so that its customers will not be kept waiting for too long, said Bank Negara Governor Tan Sri Zeti Akhtar Aziz today.

“We are expediting all investigations (into Genneva) so that we can come to an early conclusion,” Zetitold reporters on the sidelines of the East Asian Insurance Conference here.

“We know there are many anxious depositors and investors and we will expedite as fast as we can so that there will be an early conclusion.”

Bank Negara raided several gold trading companies, of which Genneva was the most high profile, that were suspected of taking deposits illegally and violating several other banking and financial laws and had also frozen their accounts, sparking a uproar from their investors.

Genneva has some 60,000 customers and a monthly turnover of RM2 billion, according to its traders interviewed by The Malaysian Insider last week.

The company’s website however states 50,000 customers and a turnover of RM3 billion.

Genneva, Pageantry Gold Bhd, Caesar Gold Sdn Bhd, Worldwide Far East Bhd and Bestino Group Bhd are among 25 unlicensed activities offered by individuals and companies the central bank had on its investor alert list last year, double the number from 2010 and the highest on record since 2003.